He has been called the "Arab Schindler", and hailed as a man who risked his own life to save Jews during the Holocaust. Now Khaled Abdul-Wahab, a wealthy Tunisian landowner, is the object of a campaign to bestow on him the title of "righteous among the nations", the recognition by Israel for gentiles who helped to rescue Jews from the Nazis.

To coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day, the US television station PBS will air a documentary this week in its series Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab Lands, which will detail the case for Abdul-Wahab and speculate that there are other cases of Arabs who helped their Jewish neighbours during the second world war.

The documentary is based on a book by Robert Satloff, a Jewish historian and executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Satloff said he hoped Abdul-Wahab's case would be looked at in a new light. Three years ago the "righteous among the nations" case for him was turned down by Yad Vashem, the body that rules on candidates. "I am certainly hopeful that the documentary puts the spotlight back on the story of Abdul-Wahab and also other Arab rescuers," Satloff told the Observer. "I am hopeful that the powers-that-be will be prepared to take another look at this case. I think the evidence is compelling."

Satloff believes Abdul-Wahab's actions deserve to put him into the same category as Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist made famous by Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. But he also believes that his inclusion would be more significant. Among the 20,000 accepted names at the Yad Vashem memorial, there are many different nationalities. There are already more than 60 Muslims, mostly Albanians and Bosnians. Abdul-Wahab would be the first Arab.

Satloff thinks that acceptance of Abdul-Wahab's case would be a powerful force for improving Arab-Israeli relations. He believes it would show Israelis and other Jews that there had been a time when Arabs had helped Jewish people. "There is a difficulty among some people in accepting the idea that Arabs may have helped Jews," Satloff said. At the same time, it would do much to combat widespread antisemitism.

"It would show some Arabs that they were willing to help their Jewish neighbours," he said, adding that he had discovered cases where Arab families tried to cover up the fact that their relatives had helped Jews to escape Nazi persecution.

Satloff has uncovered numerous incidents. In Algeria, French colonial officials offered the chance to take over confiscated Jewish property and not a single Arab participated, though many French people did. In Algiers, Muslim clerics spoke out against the scheme.

Satloff discovered Abdul-Wahab's story as he was researching his book. He had posted a message on a website popular with Tunisian Jews, who were now dispersed all over the world. He received a response from an old woman called Anny Boukris, now living in America, who remembered how her family had been saved by Abdul-Wahab.

"The Arabs saved many Jews. I don't know very well these stories. I remember very well only our story," she wrote. That story, which Satloff slowly uncovered, was Abdul-Wahab's. It began in November 1942 after German and Italian troops occupied Tunisia, which was home to 100,000 Jews. Jews were forced to wear yellow stars and more than 5,000 were sent to forced labour camps, where at least 46 died.

Abdul-Wahab, a well-to-do farmer and son of an eminent Tunisian historian and writer, sheltered 24 people from two Jewish families on his farm after he overheard a Nazi officer planning to rape one of the women, Boukris's mother. He shielded them from harm by keeping them on his estate. He even intervened when a drunken German soldier threatened to kill one of the girls, shouting: "I know that you are Jews and I am going to kill you tonight!"

Like Schindler in occupied Poland, Abdul-Wahab protected those under his charge by remaining close to the German occupiers, often wining and dining them at parties. The crisis finally ended when the Allies liberated the country four months later. Abdul-Wahab, who died in 1997, has been honoured by numerous Jewish groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Yet the story of Arabs, Jews and Nazis in North Africa remains an ignored but important chapter in the Holocaust's history. Satloff believes that only by confronting the historic truth – that Arabs helped Jews as much (or as little) as anyone else – can some of the problems of the present be tempered.

"The truth will come out," he said. "There is enough dividing Arabs and Israelis already without this historic baggage."